On a stage in Las Vegas Wednesday night, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump met to begin the process of drawing our long national nightmare to an end. (Or maybe not: asked if he’ll concede the race if he loses, Trump said, “I’ll look at it at the time.”) The 25th and final debate of the 2016 election began with Donald Trump insulting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and closed with Trump calling Clinton “a nasty woman.” Between those bookends, though, moderator Chris Wallace bravely navigated the candidates through one of the more substantive debates of the general election – pressing both on issues like abortion, national debt and immigration that went largely neglected in previous rounds. Trump, who has clashed with moderators in the past, appeared pleased with Wallace’s questions, interjecting, “Thank you!” in response to a Clinton question about Wikileaks and, “Correct!” in the middle of a question to Clinton about the state of the economy.
But that didn’t keep the night from devolving into an absolute disaster. Here are the most WTF moments from the very last debate of the 2016 election.
On Trump’s beef with the Notorious RBG
Trump: “The Supreme Court: that’s what it’s all about. … Something happened recently where Justice Ginsburg made some very inappropriate statements toward me and toward a tremendous number of people – many, many millions of people that I represent – and she was forced to apologise, and apologise she did. But these were statements that should never ever have been made.”
On late-term abortion
Clinton: “The kinds of cases that fall at the end of pregnancy are often the most heartbreaking, painful decisions for families to make. I have met with women who toward the end of their pregnancy get the worst news one could get, that their health is in jeopardy if they continue to carry to term, or that something terrible has happened that has just been discovered about the pregnancy. I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions. You can regulate if you are doing so with the life and the health of the mother taken into account.”
Trump: “… If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month you can take the baby, and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. Now, you can say that that’s OK, and Hillary can say that that’s OK, but it’s not OK with me.”
On The Wall, and whether Trump will build it
Clinton: “When it comes to the wall that Donald talks about building, he went to Mexico. He had a meeting with the Mexican president. Didn’t even raise it. He choked, then got into a Twitter war because the Mexican president said, ‘We’re not paying for that wall.'”
On undocumented immigrants
Trump: “We have some bad hombres here, and we’re going to get them.”
On Vladimir Putin
Trump: “I don’t know Putin. He said nice things about me. If we got along well, that would be good. If Russia and the United States got along well and went after ISIS, that would be good. He has no respect for her. He has no respect for our president…”
Clinton: “Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president.”
Trump: “No puppet. No puppet. … You’re the puppet!”
Clinton: “It’s pretty clear you won’t admit that the Russians have engaged in cyber attacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, rake up nato, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race so I think this is such an unprecedented situation, we’ve never had a foreign government trying to interfere in our election.”
On the use of nuclear weapons
Clinton: “The bottom line on nuclear weapons is that when the president gives the order, it must be followed. There’s about four minutes between the order being given and the people responsible for launching nuclear weapons to do so. And that’s why 10 people who have had that awesome responsibility have come out and in an unprecedented way said they would not trust Donald Trump with the nuclear codes or to have his finger on the nuclear button.”
On their differing levels of experience
Clinton: “On the day when I was in the Situation Room, monitoring the raid that brought Osama bin Laden to justice, he was hosting The Celebrity Apprentice.”
On the sexual assault allegations against Trump
Trump: “First of all, those stories have been largely debunked. Those people, I don’t know those people. I have a feeling how they came [out]. I believe it was her campaign that did it. Just like if you look at what came out today on the clips where I was wondering what happened with my rally in Chicago and other rallies where we had such violence. She is the one, and Obama, that caused the violence. They hired people. … The stories are all totally false. I have to say that. And I didn’t even apologize to my wife, who is sitting right here, because I didn’t do anything.”
On the Clinton Foundation
Trump: “It’s a criminal enterprise. Saudi Arabia giving $25 million. Qatar, all of these companies. You talk about women and women’s rights. These are people that push gays off buildings. These are people that kill women and treat women horribly. And yet you take their money. So I’d like to ask you right now, why don’t you give back the money that you have taken from certain countries that treat certain groups of people so horribly? Why don’t you give back the money?”
On the Trump Foundation
Clinton: “The Clinton Foundation spends 90 percent of all the money that is donated on behalf of programs around the world and in our own country. I’m very proud of that. We [have] the highest rating from the watchdogs that follow foundations. And I’d be happy to compare what we do with the Trump Foundation, which took money from other people and bought a six-foot portrait of Donald. I mean, who does that?”
On whether Trump will concede the election, if he loses
Trump: “What I’m saying is, I’ll tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense, OK?”
On whether the Emmys are rigged
Clinton: “Every time Donald thinks things are not going in his direction, he claims whatever it is is rigged against him. The FBI conducted a year-long investigation into my e-mails. They concluded there was no case. He said the FBI was rigged. He lost the Iowa caucus. He lost the Wisconsin primary. … He said the Republican primary was rigged against him. Then Trump University gets sued for fraud and racketeering. He claims the court system and the federal judge is rigged against him. There was even a time when he didn’t get an Emmy for his TV program three years in a row and he started tweeting that the Emmys were rigged.”
Trump: “Should have gotten it.”
Clinton: “This is a mind-set. This is how Donald thinks.”
On Aleppo
Chris Wallace: “You said several things in that debate which were not true, sir. You said that Aleppo has basically fallen. In fact, there are–”
Trump: “It is a catastrophe. It’s a mess. Have you seen it? Have you seen it? Have you seen what’s happened to Aleppo?”
Wallace: “Let me finish my question.”
Trump: “OK, so it hasn’t fallen? Take a look at it.”
Wallace: “There are a quarter-million people still living there and being slaughtered.”
Trump: “That’s right. And they’re being slaughtered because of bad decisions. Aleppo is a disaster. It’s a humanitarian nightmare. But it has fallen from any standpoint. Whatdya need a signed document? Take a look at Aleppo.”
On what two of Clinton’s most visible surrogates supposedly think about her
Trump: “[Clinton campaign manager] John Podesta said some horrible things about you. And boy was he right. He said some beauties. And you know, Bernie Sanders, he said you have bad judgment. You do. And if you think that going into Mosul after we let the world know we’re going in and all of the people that we really wanted, the leaders, they’re all gone. If you think that was good, then you do. Now John Podesta said you have terrible instincts. Bernie Sanders said you have bad judgment. I agree with both.”
On homegrown terrorism
Clinton: “We are going to do very careful, thorough vetting. That does not solve our internal challenges with ISIS and our need to stop radicalisation – to work with American-Muslim communities who are on the front lines to identify and prevent attacks. In fact, the killer of the dozens of people at the nightclub in Orlando, the Pulse nightclub was born in Queens, the same place Donald was born.”
Regarding Clinton’s stance on Obamacare
Trump: “Your husband disagrees with you.”
On Obamacare
Clinton: “That’s part of my commitment to raise taxes on the wealthy. My social security payroll contribution will go up, as will Donald’s – assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it – but what we want to do…”
Trump: “Such a nasty woman.”
Clinton: “…is to replenish the Social Security trust fund by making sure that we sufficient resources.”
